As I try my best not to think about the ramifications of being a teenage girl in your twenties, I ironically went further into the past to when the concept of the girl was not metaphorical. By twelve-years-old, it was clear that I was no longer a child and that I was tween: old enough to ride the Subway alone and hang out with friends without the permission of my parents. I got rid of the Barbies, kept my Little Pet Shop and tried to hide my American Girl Dolls.
As I watched Barbie, I could hear little whispers in the theater of girls asking their mothers what was going on. What is this patriarchy and why does Barbie sense violence while rollerblading at Santa Monica? At their age, I would have definitely known. Big words like patriarchy were found in the library books that I hid under my pillow after my mom turned off the lights. I understood Barbie’s discomfort and why she kept getting arrested. I almost felt obliged to tell them about feminism as their mothers were unsure what movie they were seeing. It was not my place. Therefore, I was quiet. Like I did a decade prior, they would figure it out themselves.
I have this recurring memory every time I am in a hotel room. Laying on my back in the bed, looking up to the ceiling fan, watching it spin, trying not to blind myself with the light and I feel this unsteadiness that I have been there before. Sure, I have done this consciously, being drawn to the ceiling fan, but I know this memory is not mine. It was either passed down to me by a dream, a tweet, or someone else’s recollection. Yet, I keep it as truth with me as part as collective trauma.
If there is any book that I was more grateful for checking out as a kid, it would be Lolita. I heard Lana Del Rey mention it in her songs and I thought the words were so pretty that I wrote them down in my notes and did renditions on voice notes. I really have not been singing lyrics like “kiss me on my open mouth” by Rey at ten, but I digress. I knew the premise and was eager to learn what the controversy was about. Then I became mad. Why were people misinterpreting the book if it was so obvious to me in elementary school? For years, I kept annoying and telling the misguided how Lolita ended with Dorles dying at childbirth, almost pleading if this is what they wanted. As the years go by, I wonder if that decision has spared me from the worst of it.
Only once did I know I was completely safe. At twelve, I volunteered to portray La Virgen de Guadalupe for her feast day. When I put on my costume, I was transformed. There was no need for respectability politics. In the 10 minutes of pression, I became everting good and pure to an entire culture. Grown men came up to me with tears forming in their eyes saying how much I reminded them of their mothers, almost kneeling at my feet beholding a miracle. Everyone else told me I never looked more beautiful having their very own virgencita. It soon dawned on me in the changing room that it would be over the moment I took off the veil.
